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Platt Street Bridge

Emily Morry

Historical Researcher, City of Rochester

The Platt Street Bridge, pictured here in 1925, united the city both symbolically and economically upon its opening in 1891.

After the New York Central Railroad station moved from Mill Street to Central Avenue in 1883, Rochester’s commercial activity began to shift eastward across the Genesee River. Built the following decade, the 858-foot long truss bridge not only connected the industrial districts along both sides of the Upper Falls, it also ensured that manufacturers in the old Brown’s Race neighborhood on the western shore did not become isolated in the wake of the recent migratory trend.

Beyond providing an invaluable link between the city’s west and east sides, the infrastructure served additional practical uses.

Platt Street proved to be a strategic snow removal site in times of meteorological misery. During a particularly bad storm in January of 1905, 75 teams of 300 men transported wagons filled with snow to the bridge, from which they dumped the frozen contents directly into the river below.

The span also reinstated a panoramic view of Rochester that the old Falls Field had once provided. The field, on the river’s eastern shore, had been a popular picnic spot, but efforts to persuade the city to convert the space into a public park were unsuccessful, and various industrial plants took over the area in the 1880s.

After the bridge opened, locals and tourists alike could once again marvel at the sights of not only the High Falls and the urban skyline, but points beyond the horizon as well.

In 1925, almost 2,000 Rochesterians congregated on the overpass to catch a glimpse of a solar eclipse. The sheer volume of people overloaded the infrastructure, causing the bridge to crack and the spectators to flee.

The schism was one of several injuries the bridge endured over the course of the 20th century. Repeated use by large vehicles and mounting pressure from high waters compromised the roadway’s support system over time and led to temporary closures in 1939, 1947, 1960 and 1968.

The Platt Street Bridge closed permanently in 1977 as the city devised plans to convert the passage into a landscaped pedestrian walkway replete with benches. Completed in 1982, the structure was renamed the Pont de Rennes in honor of Rochester’s sister city in France.

Karen Neri, owner of the Lost and Found Tavern on the river’s west side, praised the Pont as a boon to the area’s economy. “It’s been terrific,” she noted shortly after the bridge’s construction, “the people started coming over even before they opened the gates…A lot of people come by to look at the bridge and end up stopping by the restaurant.”

Though it initially boosted local traffic, the pathway did not prove as popular a destination as its planners had hoped. Strategies to revitalize the bridge and its neighboring vicinity are currently being developed.

Rochester-based group, Friends of the Garden Aerial, has devised a multipronged greening project to convert the High Falls region into the city’s first eco-district. One of the organization’s main goals is to create an arboretum on the Pont de Rennes, thereby transforming the once urban thoroughfare into a “garden in the sky.”